23 Best Instagram Tools for Marketers and Creators in 2022
March 8, 2022
Contents
Who would have thought that Instagram would grow at such a pace? Its been hardly ten years since Instagram was first launched. As of now, Instagram has over 1.16 billion active users per month. Moreover, it has 200 Million business accounts.
Anyone with half a brain knows that Social media marketing is necessary for this day and age. If you run a business, you need to promote it on social media. That’s the fastest way you can reach people.
Instagram is the fourth most popular social media platform! It allows you to grow your business. But, handling Instagram isn’t as easy as posting pictures. If you want to use Instagram for social media marketing, you need to have the right tools in your arsenal. We have put together a list of Instagram tools that make your job easier. Let’s go!
What are Instagram tools?
Instagram tools are solutions that make it easier to complete various tasks related to Instagram. For example, if you want to schedule posts on Instagram or find some exciting hashtags for your posts, you need to use third-party app/tools.
These solutions can be SaaS (software as a service) or mobile applications. They can come in handy as they allow automatizing or organizing work – edit or manage content, manage profiles and engagement, follow and find hashtags, share tasks, and improve teamwork.
They can also help you monitor your profile's performance or the results of your marketing campaigns. In the end, many tools help with other aspects of social media marketing – planning and scheduling posts, tracking competitors' activity, managing customer relations, etc.
No matter your goal–growing an audience, increasing engagement with posts, tracking how your content performs on Instagram – there are dedicated tools to help you efficiently do all this.
As business owners, you know that time is your most valuable resource. Even though Instagram is a powerful tool for boosting your brand and sales, it can be challenging to manage. That’s why having the right tools is so important!
There are plenty of Instagram marketing tools out there that automate tedious tasks like scheduling posts, finding the best hashtags to use, and tracking your performance with clear metrics. Here are five ways Instagram tools can help give your account a boost:
Get Organized and Save Time
The right tools will help you organize and manage your Instagram account more efficiently, and who doesn’t want to save time?
Find Your Audience
Instagram marketing tools can help you find new followers and grow your audience.
Build Your Following
Use the right tools to automate some of your Instagram tasks. These tools also allow you to engage with your followers by liking their posts, leaving comments, or following them back, all from one dashboard.
Instagram Scheduling Tools
Instagram scheduling tools let you plan and prepare your posts in advance. The best way to reach the right audience is to use the right hashtags and post at the right time.
For example, 7 PM is when your target audience is the most active, but you can’t post at that time because you are busy. What should you do? With Instagram scheduling tools, you can schedule your Instagram posts way ahead of time. Here are some fantastic means you can use:
Agorapulse
Agorapulse Publishing tool has the most straightforward UI
Agorapulse is a full-fledged social media management tool. It has four core functions - publishing, inbox, monitoring, and reporting. But in this article, we will focus on its publishing feature. Several key features help to make this tool so user-friendly:
Pros
The ability to schedule posts for multiple social media platforms at once.
The ability to save drafts and templates for later use.
A tool for scheduling Instagram Stories provides a seamless way to plan your content.
A comprehensive analytics dashboard that measures the performance of your Instagram posts and stories.
Cheaper alternative to sprout
The multi-platform layout makes it incredibly efficient to schedule posts containing the same marketing messages for multiple social media platforms while composing a single draft.
Four publishing options publish immediately, add it to your queue, schedule it or assign it to anyone (including yourself) to save it as a draft.
Instagram allows Agorapulse to schedule posts for additional time slots or republish them regularly.
Agorapulse queue function has publishing lists, a section that organizes your posts into five categories based on status: Scheduled, Queued, To Approve, Assigned to Me, and Published.
Cons
Lacks variant functionality. This means when you schedule posts, you can’t create different versions of them to share.
You can’t leave notes, reminders, and descriptions on scheduled posts from the calendar.
Saving the draft option is not available. The only way to save a draft without scheduling or queuing it is to assign it to someone.
Price: Starts from $79/month. It has a 15-day free trial(no credit card required. Three available plans- Pro, Premium, and Enterprise.
Hootsuite
If you’re running a business and want to schedule your Instagram posts in advance, Hootsuite is the best choice for the Instagram scheduler. With over 10 million users, Hootsuite is the most popular social media management tool.
They have a wide range of plans to suit businesses of all sizes and are affordable for solopreneurs and small businesses. It has features like - publishing and scheduling social media posts, social inboxes and engagement features, streams dashboard, Social listening, and Content planning.
Pros
Schedule posts for all social media platforms from one dashboard.
Supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress, and other social networks.
Scheduled updates are displayed on the user's dashboard, and users may organize updates into categories they create.
Manage multiple Instagram accounts, schedule posts in advance, and get real-time performance analytics all in one place.
Better team collaboration by assigning tasks, managing approvals, and monitoring team performance.
Reach new customers by managing and reviewing social advertising performance.
Simply share your Instagram posts on other social networks with a push of a button through the mobile app.
Users can track brand mentions, engage with customers and manage social ads all in one place.
Cons
Hootsuite is expensive when compared with other social media management apps.
Hashtag report is not enabled in the free version. Hootsuite also doesn’t put your hashtags in your first comment.
The scheduler can be buggy at times, but aren’t all tools buggy at some point?
Harder to use with no onboarding programs to train users.
Inability to tag accounts on Instagram
Price: Hootsuite pricing is tiered based on your plan type.
$29 per month for a Professional plan - $599 per month for a Business plan.
Custom solutions are available for Enterprise organizations with their unique pricing structure.
You’re short on time but want to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to growing your Instagram audience and engagement.
You prefer to use a tool that automates finding and posting content.
You want an easy way to engage with people who are already interested in what you have to say or sell.
Pros
Publish content anywhere, anytime.
Crowdfire customizes your content according to the specific social media platform.
Directly post to your Instagram account,
Targeted hashtag recommendations.
Easy to use as compared to Hootsuite
Best content recommendations
Track mentions, likes, comments, and social messages from a neat dashboard.
Automates the process of finding and posting content.
Analytics offers help to measure your lead generation, growth, and returns.
Both an iOS and an Android app are available.
Cons
Calendar view scheduling is only available in the Premium plan
You can no longer use follow or unfollow tactics with Crowdfire
The dashboard can be cluttered and confusing.
Price: It has a free version where you can link three accounts, and you can schedule 10 posts, The Plus plan starts from $7.46/ month, the Premium plan costs $37.48/month, and the VIP plan costs $74.98/month.
Instagram Analytics Tools
When it comes to Instagram, you need to be aware of what is happening in the world of social media. And this is where Instagram analytics tools come in handy. With these tools, you can see your community's likes and how they respond to your posts.
Instagram Insights
Instagram Insights is the built-in analytics tool for Instagram. Want to track the metrics? Why not use Instagram Insights. Moreover, it is free. Any user who has switched their account from Personal to Business can view Insights and use it.
Pros
Covers all the significant metrics like Engagement, Likes, Shares, etc.
The primary statistics covered are impressions, reach, views, clicks on the link in bio, reach, engagement, likes, comments, saves.
Available audience demographics
Built-in feature, so you do not have to leave the app to track the metrics.
It is free.
Cons
It offers basic statistics, which can be insufficient for further content planning.
Just a quick snapshot of your analytics.
Doesn’t help with in-depth analysis
Price: Free
Iconosquare
Iconosquare is a step up from simple Instagram insights. Why? It provides more data than Instagram insights and follows audience behavior closely. This tool is suitable for small businesses and start-ups who want to build their audience.
Pros:
We recommend Iconosquare because it gives you a better understanding of:
Audience engagement (who likes, comments, and shares your posts
Average engagement rate per post (how many people engage with each post)
Follower growth rates (where your followers are coming from
When and where people engage with your content the most (so you know when to post for maximum response)
The type of content that resonates best with your audience (so you can make more of it)
Iconosquare is so helpful because it helps you optimize your content production and scheduling by seeing what works best at what times.
It has an excellent competitor spying feature. You can learn what’s working for them so you can start doing more of what they’re doing.
Cons:
Instagram post-management can’t separate paid and organic posts.
Instagram publishing can be messy
Comment tracking
Tracking story posts can be difficult
Price:
It starts from Pro Plan, which costs $49/month; also has Advanced and Enterprise plans. A 14-day free trial is available.
Awario
Awario is not necessarily a social media marketing tool, but it is a more social media monitoring tool. It helps you monitor all your social media channels in one place.
Pros
Grow organically by joining in honest conversations about your niche
Instant gratification – score new customers when they’re looking for businesses
Instagram analytics for your audience
Improve brand reputation by answering customer questions
Great value pricing
Great filtering options so you can sort through the mentions that matter most to you. You can filter by sentiment (positive or negative), language, location, and more.
Allows search for exact URLs.
Search within mentions. So if there’s a particular person(influencer) whose mentions you want to follow closely, you can add them as an alert, and Awario will show only posts made by that person in your results.
Cons
The biggest downer of Awario is it has lost Facebook and Instagram monitoring from its platform, which has significantly reduced its use-case. The team is currently working on getting Instagram and Facebook monitoring back with proper approval as of January 2022.
Price:
Starter($39/month).
Pro($119/month).
Enterprise($399/month).
It also has a free trial.
Phlanx
Phlanx is a social media monitoring tool like Awario, that helps you keep a close eye on Instagram influencers and celebrities. It is mainly an influencer marketing software. It is a great way to choose the influencer who is best suited for your business.
Pros
Brand Mentions: Track all web mentions of your brand
Influencer Directory: Grow your social media followers by working with influencers worldwide
Collaborations: Partner with other brands to cross-promote each other
Audience Analysis: Analyse your audience to find suitable influencers for your brand
Instagram engagement calculator to track your audience activity
Campaign Manager: Manage your social media campaigns and create event lists and campaigns by analyzing data from all social media platforms
Excellent customer service.
Easy to use and intuitive UI
Cons
We didn’t find anything people hated about Phlanx.
Price:
Basic plan($25/ month)
Premium($35/month)
Business($50/month).
It also offers a one-month free trial.
Instagram Marketing Tools
Instagram marketing is not just about hashtags and posting daily; there is more to it. Marketing tools just make the job easier for you.
Shortstack is an All-in-one contesting software. It is helpful for Instagram marketing because you can create online giveaways and hashtag contests with its help. It is the best Instagram marketing tool to run high Instagram hashtags contests.
Pros
Collect and display user-generated content, interact with followers, choose winners, and watch your Instagram channel grow.
Shortstack can collect Instagram and Twitter post images, video, text, and usernames associated with any hashtags you specify.
You can moderate and display the content on your website or landing page and use it.
Automatically collect comments from Facebook and Instagram posts as entries.
Easily remove duplicate comments/ entries.
ShortStack’s rights management tool allows you to get permission to use UGC(User-generated content from contests and giveaways)
Select randomly generated winners. Collect your entries, then find out the winner with the click of a button.
Cons
Steep learning curve for new users
Running multiple campaigns in the tool can be frustrating
Limitations on page views and entries even with a subscription.
It is expensive
Price: Starts from $99/month. It has a free trial.
Kicksta
There is no shortcut to increasing your followers on Instagram. You can buy followers if you want, but the engagement won’t be genuine, and it offers no real growth. Kicksta is one of the best Instagram tools to aid follower growth as it helps you grow organically with the help of AI.
Pros
Easy to use website
Everything from engagement and getting users to like and follow your Instagram account is completely automated.
No lagging on the website.
Choose the Instagram accounts with the audience you want, and Kicksta likes their followers' photos for you.
You can approve each photo Kicksta likes before it gets sent out
Kicksta has a built-in “cool down” period to ensure you don’t hit Instagram’s daily limit for likes
You can pause your engagement if you want
Kicksta will monitor your account for spammy content and remove it automatically.
Cons
If Instagram sniffs out a human is not managing your account, and a bot is, it may get banned.
Growth tool and audience filtering tools are only available on the advanced plan.
Price: Standard plan starts at $49/month. No free trial is available
Sparkcentral
Just putting out content on Instagram isn’t enough. You need to engage with your audience as well. Sparkcentral is a leading digital customer engagement platform that makes it easy for businesses to deliver superb customer service on social media, messaging, and other chat channels.
Pros
The onboarding process is easy
Tracking is much more detailed than Reporting
Aggregation of all customer conversations from Social Media channels ensures centralized communication.
Ensures security and accountability for users.
Cons
Time filters are unavailable.
Reporting is a headscratcher. Fundamental insights such as tickets per week and average time to solve are challenging to find.
Integration with CRM is tricky.
Price: Free trial of 30 days. Integration with Hootsuite means if you have a Hootsuite subscription, you can use Sparkcentral.
Linktree
Instagram doesn’t allow you to add links. The only places on Instagram where you can add links are - your bio and your Instagram story if you have more than 10k followers. So, what to do if you want to direct your followers to your links? Linktree offered the solution. It helps you to create a micro webpage for all your links.
So instead of having just one link in your Instagram bio, you can add as many as you find convenient.
Pros
It’s a simple platform that lets you add as many links as you want and customize how they appear.
Linktree gives you the privilege of handling several accounts at once and moving between them.
If you choose the Pro version, you can also see some analytics about your audience’s clicks on the different links.
Your Linktree page will update in real-time when you change your profile links on any platform.
Cons
Themes and Analytics are pretty basic
Price:
Free plan available
Paid plan starts from $6/month.
Instagram Ads Tools
Instagram Branded Content Tools
Like Instagram Insights, a built-in analytics tool, Instagram Branded content tools help creators/ businesses level up their advertising game. The branded content tools make it easier for companies and creators to work together more transparently.
Pros
Discover creators for your influencer marketing campaigns
Approve and promote branded content posts from those creators
To find creators to work with, simply head over to the “Creator” tab in your Business account on Instagram.
You can narrow your search by entering keywords, location, or category — which is excellent for finding creators who are already working with competitors in your industry.
With Instagram, branded content ads can easily choose which branded content posts to promote to reach a much wider audience.
Increase discovery by using Shopping From Creators and Branded Content Ads with Product Tags to drive customers from “see” to “buy” in just a few clicks.
Cons
To create an Instagram Branded content ad, you need to have a Facebook ads account.
Price: You can set your budget with Facebook ads when creating campaigns.
Ads Manager
You can manage both Facebook and Instagram advertising through the Facebook Ads manager. Ads Manager is your starting point for running ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network.
It’s an ad management tool that helps you set up and run campaigns and manage ad accounts and billing. However, you need to set up a Facebook Business account before using Ads Manager.
Pros:
Instagram ads allow you to drive traffic to your site.
Another critical reason that Instagram ads are a great way to advertise is that they include CTAs.
Different options for advertisements- Instagram video ads, individual photos, multi-photo carousel ads, story ads, and reel ads
Cons:
The User interface is outdated and not intuitive.
You cannot delete your Facebook Ads account once you have created it.
Have you ever wondered which Instagram hashtags are the most popular? Or maybe you have a list of your own that you want to track against your competitors’? Either way, Panoramiq allows you to do both. How to use it?
All you have to do with this tool is enter the hashtag(s) into the search bar.
Hit Enter.
The app will then take you to a page where you can see a graph of how many posts have been tagged with that specific hashtag over time.
You can also click on any part of the graph to see what other tags are trending at this moment.
You can track your hashtags, mentions, and keywords across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Analyze social media posts from any public profile.
Price: Starts from $7.99 (FREE for all Enterprise)
Display Purposes
This is a web-based, free Instagram hashtag tool you can use. Wondering how to use this free tool?
All you have to do is enter the Instagram username.
The website will direct you to IQ hashtags, where sign-up is required.
After registering, you can research popular hashtags that are suitable for you.
You can search for any hashtag to see related tags, age and gender usage demographics, language breakdowns, and the top posts that have used the hashtag.
Price: Free
Synapview
Synapview is a great tool that allows you to create and save Instagram Streams in Hootsuite. Not only does it help you to manage your following and hashtags better, but it also allows you to keep a firm eye on the competition.
How does it work?
Synapview is a mobile app that helps you monitor hashtags from multiple Instagram accounts in one dashboard.
Synapview comes complete with an analytics feature that tells you how popular your posts are.
It also tells you how many times others engage with your posts and what time of day is best for posting.
Price: Starts from $7.99
Instagram Stories Tools
Adobe Rush
The Adobe suite is the go-to tool for graphic designers, photographers, animators, video editors, illustrators, and most creatives worldwide.
But if you’re an Instagram user who just wants to shoot, edit and share high-quality content directly from your phone or iPad, Adobe Rush is all you need. Adobe Rush is a pretty impressive toolkit. It includes features like:
Drag-and-drop transitions
Easy titles
Export to Instagram or other social media platforms directly within the app
Color correction
Speed controls
Advanced audio controls
And the FREE account is good enough for you to create high-quality social media videos – though you’ll eventually run into limitations.
If you’re serious about your business and want to create high-quality Instagram story videos, then Offeo Instagram Story Maker has professionally designed templates, which will make you stand out in the crowd.
Price: Starts at $9.99/month
Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform that creates social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content. Even if you don’t have editing experience, Canva does the job for you.
How it works?
The app already offers templates for Instagram posts, stories, videos, ads, and more.
It’s launched a new feature called ‘Resize’ that allows you to create a single image that works for multiple platforms.
For Instagram stories, you can sign in to Canva with your Gmail account.
Then click on Templates> Social Media
Select “Instagram Stories”. There are thousands of free templates you can use.
Price: Free. It has Pro and Enterprise plans starting from $12.99/month.
VSCO
VSCO, which stands for Visual Supply Company, is an app that allows users to edit photos. It is increasingly popular among Instagram users, who use it to edit pictures for Instagram posts. What’s so unique about it?
VSCO is wildly popular because of its unique filters.
You can also use it to capture photos and edit them with preset filters and tools.
The free version of VSCO offers ten filters. You can avail the other features with the paid plans.
If you want to share pictures on your Instagram stories, we highly recommend using this editing app.
Price: Free Version available. The Annual Membership costs $19.99/year
Snapseed
Snapseed is one of the top-ranked photo-editing apps on Google Playstore and is owned by Google. Snapseed is similar to Lightroom because it lets users edit images on their phones. Moreover, the output is pretty professional.
What does Snapseed do?
The app allows you to control image brightness, contrast, saturation, shadows, highlights, ambiance, and a host of other variables.
You can also use it for micro-correcting your pictures or applying filters to them.
Snapseed is one of the best Instagram tools that let you share photos right after editing them. A perfect tool for Instagram feed and stories.
Have you ever wanted to find the right influencer for your brand?
Fourstarzz is an influencer recommendation engine that has helped many great brands such as BMW to discover the right influencers for their Instagram campaigns.
The cool thing about this app is that it has a database of over 750,000 influencers across five social media channels.
You can use it to find influencers in your industry based on topics, keyword, handle, and other filters.
Price: Starts from $59/month
Brand Collabs Manager
You can add your Instagram business account to Brand Collabs Manager, if you have access, by going to Brand Collabs. Once you do, you’ll be able to search through potential collaborations by:
Brands with which you’ve collaborated in the past
Creators who follow your Instagram account
People whose profile and content matches an audience that you create
The tool also shows the creators’ total social reach and engagement rate, so brands can see how many people will see their content if they team up for a campaign.
Price: Click on login as an Advertiser and get started. It is free.
FAQs: Instagram tools
What are Instagram tools?
Instagram tools are web-based or app-based tools that are used to create, post, manage, analyze and grow your Instagram account. Instagram tools help you save time, increase your followers and boost engagement, which helps grow your business faster.
Instagram tools can help you with the following:
Edit your photos and videos, create stories, carousel posts, and more.
Schedule your posts so that you're not always glued to your phone.
Find relevant hashtags for your posts. It also helps in finding competitors, influencers, and customers.
Analyze your performance on Instagram — engagement rates, audience growth, most used filters, etc.
What are free Instagram tools?
You can use Canva, VSCO, Snapseed, and Adobe Lightroom to edit your Instagram images. You can use Display Purposes to track and find reliable hashtags. And finally, you can use Instagram Insights, the in-built analytics feature of Instagram, to track your metrics.
What tools do Instagram influencers use?
For photo-editing, 29.30% of Instagram influencers use Adobe Lightroom. But for post scheduling and Instagram management, Influencers use Hootsuite.
Conclusion: Instagram tools
In general, using Instagram tools should be easy enough to do. Most will have the same basic functions, but some may be better for you than others, depending on your needs.
In the end, it’ll come down to your personal preferences and how much time you want to spend maintaining your Instagram presence.
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